Sunday in Outer Blogness: Armageddon deferred (again) edition!

September ended, the “blood moon” came and went, and — surprise, surprise — the end-of-the-world financial collapse (predicted by Julie Rowe and the preppers) didn’t happen.

I was just wondering why so many people go bananas over disaster predictions that are just made up when there are so many reality-based problems they could be freaking out over. Probably because it’s so much more exciting to have a problem where the solution is to buy a bunch of survival supplies than to have a problem with difficult, complex solutions involving boring stuff like eating less meat, not driving a gas-guzzling SUV, legislating CO2 regulations, making/following treaties with other countries, etc. Then Peepstoner and MrsApostate came up with a brilliant compromise/analysis:

Can we get the Rowe-ite preppers to donate their tents and survival gear to the Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey? I’m not in the morridor, and so a bit out of the zone of effectiveness for this, but can’t some containers of gear and food that will never otherwise be touched again get loaded up and sent to people who are actually living through Armageddon?

[…]

This is a great idea. Unfortunately, the whole point of the prepper movement is to save YOURSELF and laugh while everyone else burns. It is an intrinsically selfish movement that has no room for charity, helping others, or literally anything else that one dude talked about. What was his name? Jeebus or something?

The biggest LDS news this past week (other than the world not ending) was the replacement of three apostles. There was a lot of speculation, but in the end they decided to go with three white, middle-aged, financially successful men from Utah. I think they should have gone with Julie Rowe — at least she tries to prophesy instead of just giving up right out of the gate.

This came to pass during another inspiring episode of General Conference, in which we apostates got to play the villain again.

Speaking of conference, Mithryn didn’t quite make it to 40 talks in 40 days, but decided to tackle better topics instead.

In other church commentary, Diane Tingen wrote a song about why she can’t just leave the church alone, Knotty mused about mishies, and Daniel Midgley explained the difference between respecting beliefs and respecting people.

Meridian Magazine published an amazingly offensive piece on “helping our children choose heterosexuality” — which they had the good sense to take down — but please read the commentary if you’re curious.

In life journeys, we have the story of a Mormon transgender teen, Lynette had a great time at Affirmation, the gay Mormon southpaw’s trip to a haunted house had a rather surprising effect, David T noted that Utah custody laws explicitly list religion as a criterion for deciding placement (but not education or nutrition), and Mat Sillito wrote an interesting account of his experiences as a Latino who doesn’t look the part:

My skin and features have protected me. I have been shielded from most of the racism that I have seen my family experience. I have been a part of it, absolutely, but always as a bit player, a side character, seen and heard the slurs and the threats and police abuses from a safe distance. My white skin almost perfectly covered the brown inside.

I don’t know if that occurred to my mother when she married my father. Her marriage baptized me in the river Styx, covering me in white armor that has protected me almost completely from racism and bigotry, with only a soft Hispanic heel to become exposed on occasion.

In random fun, Alexis is having fun with words, the Beehive Bugle reported on cosplaying pioneer trekkies, and Zelph on the Shelf lip-read the apostles!!

Personally I hit a milestone just yesterday that I’m quite proud of — I finally finished a complete page of the graphic novel I’ve been working on for the past year!!

On a related note, Froggy took some beautiful pictures of Bryce Canyon, and Galen Dara has some amazing art for you as well!!

Have a great week! 😀